The Moon is card number 32 of the Petit Lenormand, the thirty-six card deck read in the nineteenth-century French cartomantic tradition that took its name, after her death in 1843, from the Parisian fortune-teller Marie Anne Lenormand.
Image, meaning and playing card
The card shows the moon. In the tradition its core sense is recognition, honour, emotion and intuition; reputation and the feeling life, and the esteem others hold for the querent.
Like every card in the deck it also carries an inset playing card, here the 8 of Hearts, a survival of the ordinary piquet pack over which the pictorial Lenormand was laid. Lenormand cards are read less as standing symbols than in combination, each modifying the cards to either side, so that the moon takes much of its final meaning from its neighbours in the line or the Grand Tableau.
In the original German tradition the card is Der Mond. As House 32 in the Grand Tableau, any card landing in that numbered position is read as touching on recognition, reputation and emotional or intuitive matters, distinguished from the Sun's more concrete, active success. In combination, Moon followed by Man or Woman reads as a person who is emotionally intuitive or who is publicly recognised and admired, while Moon preceding Letter reads as an emotionally significant message or one concerning the querent's reputation. The card's phases are sometimes read directionally by practitioners using decks that depict a waxing or waning crescent rather than a full disc.